New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act sets a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in New York by 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. In keeping with this law, the portion of that act dealing with greenhouse emissions from refrigerants—known as Part 494— states that the state must go beyond what is required federally to comply with its target.

That said, Part 494 will work best when accompanied by funding mechanisms recommended in the scoping plan for helping businesses fund this transition. 

These include:

— Incentives to help food stores adopt natural refrigerants. These incentives include utility rebates and grant programs to support the adoption of natural refrigerants in food stores. According to the scoping document, incentives are particularly needed to fund a substantial portion of the installation of new equipment in existing stores in disadvantaged communities or stores operated by independent companies or small chains, to enable food stores to phase out HFCs without impacting low- to -moderate income consumers or negatively affecting food security.

Utility rebates refer to a program in which electricity utilities give financial rebates to customers who install energy efficient equipment. An upgrade to natural refrigerant-based refrigeration equipment in grocery stores and cold-storage warehouses will often yield significant energy savings over legacy equipment. These utility rebates might total as much as five to 15% of the cost of installing natural refrigerant-based systems and would help cover the incremental cost of adopting climate-friendly systems. 

— A refrigeration engineering study to gather realistic data on how much energy is saved with these technologies and which configurations optimize energy savings would move the process along. With that data in hand, guidelines for calculating the value of energy savings for this type of upgrade could be added to New York’s Technical Resource Manual, providing utilities a way to structure incentives. 

Additional funding sources

Allocations from the Environmental Bond Act of 2022, the Environmental Protection Fund, and the upcoming New York Cap & Invest Climate Action Fund are important ways to support this transition to natural refrigerants. 

Funds could also be made available from the Environmental Protection Fund, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s new Sustainable Future Program, and from the New York Cap & Invest Climate Action Fund. Small investments in refrigerant management yield high returns in emissions reductions, so these expenditures should be prioritized.

Implementing a circular economy

The scoping plan also instructs DEC to “promulgate regulations requiring reclamation or destruction of refrigerants from appliances at end-of-life, with verification and reporting, and require leak detection for certain commercial refrigeration.”

In addition to education and training, the state should provide economic support (such as incentives to purchase leak detection and reclamation equipment or compensation for refrigerant reclamation) to aid local industry with this transition. 

Businesses need funding to implement

Whether a strong and steady stream of funding comes from the Climate Action Fund or from other sources, funding is needed both for stores in disadvantaged communities and for small- and medium-sized food establishments outside the bounds of those communities. With profit margins for supermarkets hovering around 1.6 percent, many independent stores are already squeezed by high refrigerant prices and at some point will need financial assistance to upgrade their refrigeration systems.

Closing the gaps

Beyond grants, the New York Green Bank, which provides low-interest loans to help New York residents and businesses invest in climate solutions like solar panels and heat pumps, would do well to expand its loan offerings to businesses to include investments in automatic leak detection systems and climate-friendly commercial refrigeration systems. 

Beyond funding, there are  insufficient numbers of refrigeration technicians who are versed in the installation and maintenance of natural refrigerant-based systems. This shortage is another factor slowing the important transition to climate-friendly refrigerants. NYSERDA’s workforce development program should expand to include this job title.

Down the road

Extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs can also make an important difference. As the scoping plan suggests:

“An EPR program has the potential to be cost-effective and its impact easily quantified with reporting requirements. There are a wide range of manufacturers, products and types of refrigerants used in new and existing appliances. Enforcement may be challenging due to the large number of facilities managing these end-of-life appliances, and there is currently a lack of comprehensive disposal data.”

EPR  programs are currently used effectively to increase refrigerant recovery rates in many countries around the world, including Canada, Australia and several European countries, and will be valuable in New York State, as well. To ensure a successful adoption of Part 494 regulations, though, it is advisable to give adequate time and space for industry participants and New York State to successfully implement these new responsibilities before moving to adopt a refrigerant EPR in New York.

This article was supplied by New Yorkers for Cool Refrigerant Management. Visit www.NY4cool.org for more.